


Heal Our Losses

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chavez gets passed around like currency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heal Our Losses

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 2004.

Heal Our Losses  
By Candle Beck

Zito calls from across the clubhouse, “Hey, cabrón!” There’s white foul-line chalk on one side of Zito’s face and neck, smeared like flour, a skinny track of clean skin from behind his ear to his shoulder, where a drop of sweat has rolled down.

Chavez looks up, because he’s the only one Zito calls that, and the fluorescent lights strike hard in his eyes. He blinks, waits for things to get clear again. Zito’s wearing long sleeves under his jersey, which is unbuttoned. He looks like he’s halfway out the door; he looks like he’s already leaving.

Zito’s waving a hand, gesturing for him to come over. When Chavez stands, his vision fractures, slow-dissolves. He’s not aware that he’s swaying, about to fall over, until he feels a hand placed steadily on his side, looks down to see Mulder, near-grinning, saying, “Careful.”

The concrete floor is cracked in interesting ways, webbed, and by the time Chavez gets over to where Zito is, Zito has forgotten what he wanted to tell him and so they don’t talk about anything.

* * *

The night guards at the Coliseum know his face, they call him ‘hot shot’ and rag him for going oh-for-five the night before. Chavez plays along until he can gracefully extract himself and escape into the stadium.

It’s two in the morning and the place is truly haunted. Chavez has got a set of keys to let him through the tunnels, and not too many people know that he comes down here a lot in the middle of the night. Tonight it’s so he can look at tape, honest preparation. He watches his own at-bats, over and over again, until he doesn’t recognize the man at the plate as himself anymore. There’s a hitch in his swing, recently, he’s trying to pin it down. He’s not turning his wrists over on the follow-through the way he’s been taught, and this is something that he’s never had to think about before.

In the corner of his eye as he leaves the video room, locking the door behind him, he sees Vida Blue down the hallway, glowering from under his eyebrows, his hand moving slowly and gripping a baseball that shines in the darkness. And when Chavez turns to face him, Vida Blue is gone, back to where he came from.

* * *

Half-asleep, and there’s a hand on Chavez’s face.

It’s a pitcher’s hand, this he can tell. The hard tips of the fingers, a lifetime of searching for pitch grips remembered there. Chavez lifts his own hand, touches the pitcher’s wrist, the small bony knob, the soft skin of the underside.

Somebody says his name, says, “Hold still.” Chavez breathes out, pushes back, and one of them gasps, sounding more afraid than anything else. There’s a wicked twist between them, and Chavez’s head falls back, his mouth keening open.

That hand slides down his body, that famous left hand, trim-cut nails leaving behind fading white scratches on his chest, no thicker than a strand of hair. Chavez feels a roughened palm on his stomach, a mouth on his neck. Chavez bites his tongue, arches his hips up with his shoulders pressed down into the bed, thinking brokenly that he is a bridge now, he is a way over.

Somebody curses and spits in his hand, and in a spear of lucidity, Chavez knows that this must be Zito, tonight, because Zito spits in his hand dozens of times a game. Chavez is about to ask if Zito’s going to throw a fastball or a curve, but then there’s a tongue in his mouth and something ungodly happening above him, and Chavez’s mind is sky-clean, and for just a moment he is not aware that there is anything in the world that is not this.

* * *

Chavez has a recurring dream about a game that never ends. The players are all shadows, their faces indistinguishable, but Chavez can tell them apart by their batting stances, their swings, the way they turn the double play.

The game has been tied for maybe a decade, maybe longer. Every day, they come out and play from the moment the light sneaks over the horizon until the moment it gets too dark for the pitcher to read the signs. The visiting team scores in the top half of an inning and the home team matches them, run for run, neither side able to put it away.

They play on a simple field, the foul lines dug out with a spade, the infield grass shriveling, burned in the sun. There’s no outfield wall, the park just stretches on until it bleeds into the charred landscape. There’s a chain-link fence behind home plate and flat wooden bleachers to either side of the diamond. The players move like this is the place where they were born, like this is the place where they will die.

In the dream, Chavez is sitting on the end of the bench in the dugout, and before each batter goes to the plate, they touch his head for luck. Chavez is pretty sure he’s not doing them any good; if he were, the game would be over by now.

It’s a slow dream, it’s endless. Sometimes, Chavez-in-the-dream actually falls asleep and has dreams of his own. Chavez gets confused, everything about this is so real. That he can smell the dirt and feel the grass beneath his hands. That his back hurts from sitting on the bench for so long, that his hair is now irreparably tousled by all the players’ hands. That each crack of the bat widens his eyes, snaps through his heart. All this is the way it is in real life too, and eventually Chavez cannot tell the difference between this game and any other that he’s ever watched.

* * *

Chavez falls out the back door of the bar, into the alley, with his shirt untucked and someone else’s taste in his mouth. His hands are still shaking, and his eyes keep failing, everything blurring.

He can, oh, he can still feel the bathroom’s dirty floor under his knees, he can still feel his teeth scraping across taut skin and hands smoothing down his hair. He can still hear his name, broken into two separate gasps, and he has not escaped the terrible thought that if Mulder would just say his name like that more often, then maybe Chavez’s life would stop being such an utter fucking mess.

Once he gets his hands flat on the brick wall, he feels like he can breathe again.

The door slams behind him and before he can turn, there’s somebody strong up against his back, arms out on either side of him, Chavez’s hands bracketed by another pair, bigger than his, and he sees the scars on the knuckles, it’s Mulder come to find him again, Mulder not letting anything be still between them.

“Wasn’t finished with you yet,” Mulder’s voice says, almost a growl, and Chavez can feel the tremors wracking through, shuddering against the man behind him. “Why the fuck did you run away?”

Mulder takes one of his hands off the wall, fits it to Chavez’s hip, under his shirt. Chavez tilts forward, rests his forehead on the brick, and he is pulled back roughly, flush against Mulder’s body. Some kind of warning is rasped out, and then there are teeth tugging at his earlobe, a hickey worked on his throat.

Long fingers are running over his stomach and chest, and Chavez isn’t even really aware that he’s clawing at the buttons of his jeans until Mulder’s hand is atop his own, quicker and smarter, taking charge, and Chavez moans, dropping his head back onto Mulder’s shoulder, breathing in sharp hyperventilating bursts.

Chavez feels a deep laugh burring against his neck, and he bends his arm backward at an unnatural angle, hooking around Mulder’s waist, his hand clenched in a fist and pressed to the small of the man’s back, holding them together as tightly as he can. When he comes, it’s with this strange little cry.

The weight at his back is suddenly gone, and Chavez slumps forward, panting hard with his shoulder braced against the wall. He hears Mulder’s footsteps walking away, and tastes thin red brick dust, ashen on the roof of his mouth.

* * *

In the city, where totaled cars hug telephone poles and there’s a splintered fracture running down thirteen floors of windows in a skyscraper made of glass, Chavez buys a paper from a newsstand and throws away everything but the sports section, sitting on an abandoned stoop in the sallow light of the streetlamp.

He reads every story, every score, every stat, and he studies his own line without registering that this E. Chavez, who seems to have trouble against left-handed pitching, is him.

The streetlamp flickers, fire-like shadows on his sprawled legs, and Chavez looks up. Across the street is a church, a drive-thru confessional, and the marquee at the front reads plainly, ‘We Shall All Be Healed.’

Chavez doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels the tears fall onto his hands.

* * *

In Zito’s car, the radio’s turned up loud, so they don’t talk. Zito drums his hand on the steering wheel, his thumb keeping time with the bass beats. Chavez’s eyes can see nothing but the smeary scatter of lights, streetlamps and headlights and neon signs and the blinking green men at the crosswalk.

Zito’s hand is on his leg, suddenly, and Chavez blinks down at it, thinking disjointedly, ‘where did that come from?’ Zito’s fingers tighten and Chavez remembers why he got in the car with the pitcher tonight.

Zito isn’t looking at him, and his hand stays there until he has to shift gears, and then comes back, a little higher this time, steady and warm.

Chavez has a clear vision of himself with his arms thrown wide, his body unprotected, his face turned up to the sky. This might be sacrifice, it might be surrender, it might be redemption.

San Francisco’s been lit on fire outside his window, he can feel the blistered heat of it and smell the smoke, and Chavez hopes that they make it to the ocean before this catches up with them.

* * *

Chavez steps into the batter’s box and feels the world funneling down around him, whisper-silent and his heartbeat stuttering in his head.

Here, briefly, his power is easily defined, his every weakness well-known.

He won’t bite on first ball heat, and the second pitch clips the corner just as he pulls his hands back, and he is quickly in a hole.

He steps out, the stadium noise crashing down around him again, the lights searing, and pulls off his helmet, pushing a hand through his hair before he puts his helmet back on and wraps his hands around the bat, moving deftly back into the box like sinking underwater, and all he can hear and see is what he takes down with him.

Chavez battles back to a full count and he would live here if he could, he would never leave the field, the lines of the infield and the span of the outfield everything that makes sense to him anymore.

The payoff pitch is cutting low and inside, but it’ll find the zone, and Chavez swings hard, just looking to stay alive, but he drops his left shoulder and loses his balance, a painfully awkward cut and the ump punches him out.

Chavez looks down at his hands for a moment, still gripped tight and choked up on the bat, and then steps out of the box, his beautiful quiet life getting deafening and terrible again as he walks back to the dugout with his head down.

* * *

There’s a sound in the darkness, and Chavez rolls over, pushes the pillow off his head. Piecing through the shadows, Chavez picks out Mulder standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him.

“You’re not asleep,” Mulder says conversationally.

Chavez is still near to his dream, he still feels like he might be good luck. “Not anymore, no.”

Mulder’s grin is sharp, brutal. “Good,” he answers, and then climbs onto the bed, up over Chavez, their legs tangling, leans down with his elbows to either side of Chavez’s head, their noses close enough to touch, close enough to feel Mulder’s breath on his lips.

Mulder studies him carefully for a moment, then moves to brush his hand across Chavez’s forehead, rustling his fingers through Chavez’s hair, angling down to kiss him, take his breath away.

Mulder draws back, pulls Chavez up to strip his T-shirt off him. Chavez lets Mulder undress him numbly, thinking that he doesn’t even really have to move, everything will be done for him.

Skimming his palms down Chavez’s sides, Mulder works slowly against the other man, hovering above him, not lowering himself down onto Chavez, Chavez increasingly twisting and desperate under his hands.

Mulder waits until Chavez is near to incoherent, whipping his head back and forth on the pillow, before he suddenly pulls all the way back, removes his hands from Chavez’s body and asks with something black in his tone, “Who else are you fucking?”

Chavez stiffens, shakes his head. This isn’t fair, this has got to be against the rules. “What? No one. C’mere.” He tries to pull Mulder back down against him, pressing upwards at the same time, but Mulder won’t have any of it, moving farther away, teasing him with quick unsatisfying bites along his jawline.

“Bullshit. C’mon, man, you can tell me,” Mulder purrs with true menace. “You know I don’t give a fuck what you do. Just curious.”

Chavez groans, streaks his hands across Mulder’s back, Mulder shivering. “No one,” he gasps as Mulder drags his tongue down his throat in retaliation. “I fucking swear.”

Mulder lets out a disbelieving laugh, unevenly interrupted with hard inhalations. “I see you come home,” he murmurs, ducking his head down again, Chavez craning back to give him full access, but it’s just Mulder breathing hotly on his pulse, and Chavez has probably never wanted anyone as much as he wants Mulder at this moment, Mulder who is already shifting away from him again and continuing, “I see you come home and it looks to me like you’ve been well-fucked, and I haven’t come anywhere near you in a week. So who is it, babe?” and Mulder’s voice hits a rich new low on the last word, and Chavez’s whole body is strumming, clamoring.

“You got some girl hidden away? You don’t want to tell me about her, you’re afraid I’ll steal her away from you?” Mulder laughs softly, catches Chavez’s wrists in his hand when Chavez reaches for him blindly, pinning Chavez’s hands above his head, Mulder’s other hand tracing bare designs on Chavez’s stomach. “You’re right, I probably would.”

But neither of them believes that’s the case, because Chavez is struggling against Mulder’s grip and futilely straining upwards, trying to find some friction, something, his eyes half-lidded and swollen, his teeth digging into his lower lip, his forehead pressed against his arm, and Chavez didn’t know Mulder was this strong.

Mulder smirks down at Chavez, slick shameless thing that he is, and leans close to say right in Chavez’s ear, “Or maybe you got some other guy. I think . . . maybe you don’t like girls so much anymore. Maybe you don’t want anything but this.”

Oh, and that’s true, that’s so true, and Chavez has to fight down a scream with everything in him, mumbling, “Yeah, this, this, please.”

Mulder’s eyes flash, and his voice is hateful as he asks again, “Who are you fucking?”

Chavez closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at the other man, grates out, “I am . . . *trying* . . . to fuck you. If you wouldn’t mind.” He punctuates this by lifting his head and attaching his mouth to Mulder’s collarbone, hearing the other man catch his breath harshly, startled and swiftly taking himself out of Chavez’s restrained radius.

Mulder’s hand is chained around his wrists, his expression ripped between desire and anger, madman’s eyes and Mulder whispers raggedly, “All right, keep your fucking secrets. You think you got everything, but you don’t even have me.”

And finally, finally, Mulder lets their bodies fall together, releases Chavez’s hands and kisses him so hard, they both end up with blood on their lips.

* * *

When Zito pushes him down, Chavez does not get up again.

He lies on the ground, his legs splayed, his head aching. Zito looms above him, outlined against the sky. Zito pokes him with his foot. “Get up.”

Chavez shakes his head, and Zito nudges him again. “C’mon, I was just messing around. Get up.”

Chavez lifts his arm and rests it atop his eyes. He’s better able to breathe like this, without the press of the light on his eyelids. He hears Zito shift, and hears Zito’s voice from closer than it was before.

“This is definitely, like, a sidewalk,” Zito says. “I don’t think you can just go to sleep here or whatever it is you’re doing.”

Chavez takes his arm away. Zito’s crouched next to him, his hands fluttering ineffectively. The street’s on a hill, the change is spilling out of Chavez’s pockets, rolling away down the pavement.

“I’m not going to sleep,” Chavez tells him.

Zito hikes an eyebrow. “What are you doing, then?”

Chavez reaches out, touches the collar of Zito’s shirt, his fingertips pattering high at the place where Zito’s chest meets his throat. Zito looks surprised, and moves backwards, his eyes flicking nervously up and down the street. Chavez drops his hand.

“I’m lying on the sidewalk. Clearly.”

Zito rolls his eyes. Chavez can tell he’s getting annoyed now. “Yeah, well, when you’re done being a fucking nutcase, give me a call, all right?”

And Zito stands, walks away. Chavez thinks that he’s bluffing, he wouldn’t really just leave Chavez here on the ground like this, but Zito doesn’t come back, and Chavez stares up at the sky until night falls, counts the stars until some guy who looks like he belongs to a fraternity sneers down at him and says, “Jesus, how fucking pathetic can you get,” and kicks him hard in the ribs.

* * *

When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees the Coliseum’s sturdy gray walls and the ridged hills to the east, he sees the industrial shore, the petrified oil-slick at the bottom of the water, he sees the last homerun he hit disappearing over the outfield fence and the staggered undiluted joy on his teammates’ faces the night they won the twentieth game of the streak.

When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees Zito hurling curve after curve, each one hooking like falling in love, and he sees Mulder stunning batters with his fastball, something so fierce that Chavez cannot fight against it.

When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees everything that has become the truth about him, and he knows that for all that has gone wrong in his heartbreakingly short life, this is still the worst thing he has ever done.

* * *

At the ballpark, Chavez is stretching out in short left field as Mulder and Zito warm up next to each other in the bullpen. He can hear them talking, fading in and out. Zito prefaces everything with ‘dude,’ and asks about four times if Mulder thinks Zito’s overthrowing his fastball. Mulder keeps saying, “Motherfucker, stay *down*, motherfucker,” and Chavez knows he’s talking about his curveball, but can’t quite get it out of his head that Mulder is talking about him.

Chavez squints against the sun and there is grass in his mouth. The crowd of kids leaning out from the stands and watching the players warm up keep yelling his name, waving notepads and pristine baseballs at him.

Mulder calls his name for half a minute, lost in the fans’ chorus, and eventually gets fed up and bounces a ball over to where Chavez is sitting in the grass, to get his attention. When Chavez looks over, both Mulder and Zito are standing there grinning at him. The two of them look like photographs of themselves for a moment, frozen with the pure early summer sunlight on their faces, slipping like fingers through their hair, their gloves on their hips, cocky teasing grins on their faces, like the way history will remember them.

Chavez gets up and walks over to them, handing the ball back to Mulder. “What?” he asks.

Mulder ticks an eyebrow, glances at Zito. Zito just rolls his eyes, and Mulder shrugs. “Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you’d come when called.”

Zito muffles a laugh against his hand, and Mulder’s grin has taken on a vaguely cruel edge, but that might just be Chavez imagining things.

Chavez swallows and thinks that everyone must surely see the way he is tied to these two perfect men, his stupid obedience to them, his knees ready to hit the ground the second either of them says the word, ready to do whatever they ask of him, ready to fall as far as they want him to, his skin cool and dry with anticipation or dread, this must be crystal-clear to the world.

Because they are perfect and Chavez is devastatingly not. Because they are perfect and he never will be.

THE END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bystander](https://archiveofourown.org/works/263325) by [candle_beck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck)




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